A senior lawyer in Juba, Advocate Kiir Chol Deng, on Tuesday, threatened to drag the Lakes State Governor Rin Tueny Mabor to court over the seizure of the private property of his client identified as Mary Aluel Chol Akok.
The lawyer told Radio Tamazuj that his client who hails from Warrap State is married to Jackson Makor Majur from Lakes State and both of them are dual citizens of South Sudan and Australia. He said the couple had a domestic dispute in Australia that led to the arrest of Makor and the governor allegedly intervened by seizing the Aluel’s property in Lakes State.
“On 5 June 2022, while in Australia, Jackson Makor Majur went violent and assaulted his wife, Mrs. Mary Aluel Chol Akok, and as a result, Makor was prosecuted by the Australian authorities and subsequently convicted and jailed on 29 April 2024, for one year and a half for the crime he committed,” he explained. “As a result of that conviction, Mokor’s relatives in Yirol West led by Manyiel Marial Manyiel (state minister of land and public utilities) and others, sought an intervention from the governor’s office to have Aluel’s properties confiscated until or unless she frees the convict from the prison in Australia.”
Advocate Chol said they learned that the governor instructed his deputy, Isaiah Akol Mathiang, to oversee the seizure of the property and evict Aluel’s clients, relatives, and tenants from it, which was executed.
“On 21 October 2024, Mawet Manuer Khok, the state Minister of Housing, Land and Public Utilities, started an unjustifiable assault on Aluel’s properties by issuing what he alleged to be a suspension and eviction order in which 7 houses or plots registered in her name were put under the control of the state authorities without a court order as per the annexed document,” he said.
Chol further said when the matter was brought to his client’s attention, she traveled from Australia to Yirol West County to meet the concerned authorities. She was instead abducted from Lakes State at gunpoint at night on 15 November by National Security Service (NSS) officers and later abandoned in the Rool Chuol Akol forest at the border between Lakes and Warrap states.
He said an appeal from the Warrap State Governor Francis Abur Bol to the governor of Lakes State to intervene was disregarded.
“Take notice that the acts of forcefully abducting our client after shutting down her business places and evicting her tenants from her property without any court order do violate not only the doctrine of the rule of law but also her constitutional rights as guaranteed under Articles 9 (Bill of Rights), 12, 16, 18, 27 & 28 of the National Constitution of 2011, as amended” Advocate Chol’s letter reads in part.